Eventuality
by LetsGoKoby
Summary: Shikamaru thought nothing of it; it was the natural next step in their relationship. But oh how he regretted it (but not really). fem!Naru x Shika one-shot (fixed)


**M-rating purely for safety; it's my first one-shot and the closest to raunchy I've written (so it's not really all that raunchy at all) lmfao tell me your thoughts please :)**

 **Eventuality: Shikamaru thought nothing of it; it was the natural next step in their relationship. But oh how he regretted it (but not really). –A relationship progression fic**

 **Character: Shikamaru-centric**

Shikamaru wasn't really sure how it happened, but he knew the when.

It started when the instant ramen began to show up in his cupboards.

The two of them hadn't had much interaction since the war ended. Most of it was limited to the silence they shared in the Hokage's office, when Kakashi wasn't dodging paperwork that is. While Shikamaru's genin team tousled with the masked man, crying out in dismay when Kakashi treated them to a D-rank accompanied by his patented eye smile, Shikamaru would notice a flicker in the illusion shrouding the office. The shaking of shoulders was just enough for the form of an ANBU to break the office's illusion, a form shivering in his peripherals. The heavy hood may have protected the shinobi from any defining characteristics, but Naras weren't known as geniuses for nothing and Shikamaru was considered one of their best.

And he knew the Hokage wouldn't have given his own legacy to any ninja, and since his other two students were dead or stuck in the hospital, that left one person to be the dog-masked ANBU practically bursting in the corner.

She only made it more obvious when, after the door closed behind him, her laughter practically shook the building to the ground.

Shikamaru wasn't really sure why Kakashi thought Uzumaki Naruto belonged in the ranks of their black ops corps, but that's why he didn't mess with politics.

It was that night Naruto first showed up at his place with only take-out from Ichiraku's and a large grin. She was exactly what he remembered and expected: an inane little thing that fluttered about his space, golden hair weaving in the air with restlessness.

She entered without taking her sandals off, hopped onto the counter and asked him about his day and then hopped off. When she opened the door to his room, turning on the lights and peering around, Naruto queried about how the clouds were recently and shot him a blinding grin since they looked "just the right kind of fluffy"—her words—but shook her head in understanding when he stated they weren't. Twirling into the bathroom, she shouted through the locked door about whether his genin team was actually ready for their first C-ranked mission, how she longed for her own team but her sensei said that she wouldn't make a good teacher—"Like he's one to _talk_ ," she loved to bemoan—before coming out and patting his shoulder in consolation of his "troublesome kids"—his words—on her way to the couch where she rolled and turned until her head was sideways then down and her knees were somewhere over there and her arms were hanging off the side.

He stayed sitting in the kitchen, only half listening and half answering because it was too troublesome not to do so, and she just twittered away. Shikamaru was wondering what kami-awful catalyst had launched Naruto into his apartment that night, but for all his intelligence he never found an answer.

He watched the swinging foot thrown over the back of his couch freeze when her stomach growled for more food, the sound resounding and almost as loud as she spoke. That was always how her visits would end: with a rumbling appetite and a small frown.

"I'll bring more food next time," Naruto would murmur with her eyebrows drawn and mouth sharp. She'd nod more to herself than him, bright smile blooming wide in promise, and he would still be nursing the tea in his hands. She always let herself out.

Eventually, when the amount of Ichiraku ramen became too expensive for how often she stormed his apartment, Naruto just showed up at his door with a mixed bundle of the instant noodles in her arms, demanding entrance without taking no for an answer, without taking any answer really, and dropped them all on the table with a grin.

"Now I won't get hungry, and there's some for you, too," she chirped, triumphant, before making her rounds—kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, Shikamaru—before flinging into the couch. He made a comment and she laughed and he smiled. She inquired about how his dinner with the Akimichi's went the night before and he groaned. She snickered knowingly.

That night when her stomach rumbled, she made them both ramen and continued to chatter through the noodles and broth crowding her already word-heavy mouth. It was a novel experience to see Naruto in the domestic sphere that was the kitchen, grasping through his cabinets and grabbing a pair of bowls, bouncing on her toes when she found them at the top of the shelves and still unable to reach. Shikamaru brushed behind her to pull them out, his hand on her shoulder for once, chuckling when she stubbornly grumbled in annoyance.

And in the end, she just used the cup ramen instead.

Oddly, she chose to settle on the floor—even though the counter and second chair were vacant—leaning against the fridge as she wondered aloud about a new jutsu she was attempting to create.

"I just can't get it right," she complained, "Whenever I try to move the damn thing it goes _swish!_ and _skaa!_ when it should be like _bwam!_ " Chopsticks swung and stabbed in the air, droplets of broth flinging off them to splash against his pant leg. She didn't apologize and he didn't bother asking for one.

Shikamaru cracked an eye open and she snatched his untouched food from the table. His brain took a moment to process, or at least attempt to process, what the blonde's words meant. For a few seconds he debated if he should add her flinging limbs into the equation, before giving up.

Shikamaru sighed and offered, "Have you tried adding in an ox hand seal after bird to solidify it? Or maybe if you used less chakra for monkey and more in boar you'd get less…'swoosh.'" The last word was deadpan punctuated by a long yawn.

The beat of contemplative silence should have clued Shikamaru in if not the wide, blue eyes flickering between his own grey. With the amount of time they'd spent together, Shikamaru realized that Naruto's eyes always found a way to say everything her mouth muddled and her gestures bastardized with unmistakable clarity. At that moment her eyes practically screamed wonder and adoration.

The pureness of it had a heated itch splash across the bridge of his nose that he didn't know what to do with.

He stilled when her arms wrapped around his neck and her lips crashed against him, her teeth clacking against his own before splitting his upper lip. It lasted barely a second, something more akin to a head butt via lips, before her forehead nudged into his shoulder. Stray pieces of her blonde hair squirmed into his bleeding mouth uncomfortably and one of her knees dug into his thigh and her arms were practically strangling him, but Shikamaru endured.

Her voice erupted right next to his ear: "Nara Shikamaru you are a genius!" She was already out the door by the time his body unwound enough to wince at the volume or his mind deciphered what happened. She smelt like forest and nature and spice. She tasted like ramen and salt.

Shikamaru's mind still trudged through the trill running through his blood, and when it finally reached a conclusion, he was surprised.

Surprised to be disappointed when her smell was gone. Surprised to be looking forward to her coming back and babbling and telling him if her technique was a success; he wanted to know and looked forward to knowing. Shikamaru would even help her more, if she wanted.

He hadn't expected to actually enjoy her company or her voice filling the room or her hand warm on his shoulder. He hadn't expected to want Naruto to come back and kiss him again. He wanted to kiss her.

"Troublesome," he muttered into the crook of his arm eyes unwilling to close and mind unable to cease. The scent had his brows furrow. Chamomile and cardamom wasn't nearly as intoxicating as pine and lemongrass.

Naruto was loud and brash and sparkling and nothing Shikamaru wanted in his home, but her smile could possibly be the best thing he'd ever seen and she fit snugly into the couch cushion and under his arm and so he let her stay to eat.

That evolved into her dirty clothes thrown in the corner of the living room—"My apartment is too _quiet_ , Shika!" she'd whine, but he was quiet, too—the corner of his bedroom, under his bed and shoved into the crevices of his closet. He'd find them like jewels at the end of a scavenger hunt whenever he trudged home, each article strewn about leaving the trail to the next and the next and the next until the treasure trove of dirty clothes piled into a tiny corner, his tiny corner, until she decided to retrieve them for wash.

When he came home to see the sunshine girl tracking blood and mud across his carpet for the first time, his eyes followed the mess's dizzying journey to the couch. There she laid, sprawled on the cushions and flaking blood running through her hair and covering her torso. His breath was caught until he saw her chest rise then fall and her head popped up at the sound of him returning home.

And then there was that grin, pulling so wide her cheeks split and eyes closed and that was for _him_. Naruto's head was a nest of tangles and branches and mud and blood, but she was smiling just for him and her whole countenance was beautiful.

The white of her dog mask winked cheekily at him from its place next to her soaked armor, nipping at his feet as he walked through the entryway. Her thermal was sitting happily in Shikamaru's usual chair so he hovered in the middle of the room.

"How did you get in here?" he drawled casually. His vest was folded neatly and placed on the table next to her ravaged kunai. "The door was locked," Shikamaru continued. He didn't ask her why; Naruto never needed a reason to visit and he would never force reason onto her. If she wanted her first stop back to be to his place, then that was her prerogative. The thought thrilled Shikamaru deep in his gut.

Naruto's laugh was boisterous as she pointed a gloved hand at the window in the kitchen, still open and her other glove crumpled on the sill. Her bare hand got lost in her hair, and she stated, "A great ninja like me doesn't need to _use_ doors, Shikamaru." Like he was a naive child and didn't know any better of the world. Like she didn't have to dismantle dozens of traps and seals he spent hours placing to get in. He didn't mind.

Instead of complaining, he let his eyes rove over her form and scrutinize any tear in fabric or skin bared for injury, taking her in. Logically, his mind only came in logical, Shikamaru knew any wounds would be healed by Kurama long before she got back to Konoha, but there was always an unsettled niggle until he saw it for himself.

She was always fine. He was terrified of the day she wouldn't be.

Shikamaru didn't ever want to think of it (but he never could stop thinking).

With a resigned sigh and mumbled "troublesome"—because Naruto was the definition of and that girl would be the death of him—he picked some left-overs from the fridge for himself before getting an instant ramen for Naruto.

"Miso alright?"

Naruto's answer was muffled and punctuated by squeaks and growls. Glancing back at her in curiosity, Shikamaru watched as his guest shimmied out of her long-sleeved shirt before flinging it at the bathroom door.

This time Shikamaru's roaming gaze was appreciative, taking in the slenderness of her neck and the tan skin of her arms and the slim curves hugged by the black material of her tank top. He eventually stopped to respect how good her ass looked in ANBU fatigues, the kunoichi miraculously making the pants look good for once. Her hair, tangled as it was, barely reached her shoulder blades and her fingers were fighting a losing battles with the tangles taking root.

Shikamaru chuckled, food forgotten and microwave beeping as he slouched towards her on dragging, but intent, feet. She'd been gone for a while, barely able to even stop and kiss him goodbye, and he thought maybe she owed him some condolences for the fact. Especially if she was going to shimmy around like that.

Naruto was still talking—she was always talking and it was a pleasant bustle of words—without care or filter and she laughed again making Shikamaru's heart warm. His hands twitched in his pockets and he hummed in assent to whatever the girl was saying at the moment.

He was close enough to smell the forest on her through the guts and dirt when his shrewd gaze was drawn to her fingers. One hand naked and the other clothed, they snaked to her waist and wrapped around the hem of her shirt one by one. Shikamaru's lungs stopped working—or maybe the air itself was stilled?—as the moment hung by tenuous threads in front of his eyes.

Naruto was still talking, she was always talking, and that thin thread snapped and her shirt was over her head and thrown Kami knows where because she wasn't wearing a bra and all Shikamaru could see was skin. Impossibly smooth and shimmering, taut against the muscles of her back and all Shikamaru could see was skin.

His gut twisted and his muscles tensed pleasurably, frozen in place. His chest was clogged—no, _full, bursting_ —with something excited, alluring, anxious. Shikamaru swallowed, his throat dry, and nearly choked when Naruto's back— _naked, golden, skin, stimulating, seductive_ —arched in a satisfying stretch.

Shikamaru's face burned against the hand he forcibly dragged over it. His other clenched in his pocket, tight with something he didn't want to analyze. His mind stuttered to stillness. He just, he didn't… He felt the need to look away but could only watch in silent appreciation and his body definitely agreed with his choice if the heat nuzzling in his stomach said anything.

His eyes traced the shadows kissing the curl of her spine and the dips of her shoulder blades. Dimples. She had little concave dimples peeking just above the hem of her pants that shadows nestled in. The darkness was intimate with her and Shikamaru could only wish to be in its place: his hands flat on the small of her back, his fingers tracing up her spine across her ribs around her waist and pulling her soft skin to him.

He tried hard to control his breathing, but it still came out shallow and suffocating.

Kami, what was she _doing_ to him.

And she was still _just talking_.

"Oi, Shika"—his name on her lips elicited a twitch and a sharp inhale; he shifted in an attempt to adjust but—"you wouldn't happen to have something for me to wear, do you?"

She didn't even _understand_ and that made his cheeks hotter in embarrassment and nerves. He tried to breathe in deep, answer the girl because—what did she say, again?—but was left instead with a strangled sort of gasp.

He vaguely noted her second glove soaring past his shoulder.

"Shikamaru?" she asked. Her voice was brash, but it might as well have been a purr. Confused, Naruto huffed, "Seriously, you can't even get me a sh—"

She was turning towards him with crossed arms and naked waist up and Shikamaru decided he simply could not handle that. Shikamaru's hand snapped to cover his eyes in what most would consider a slap and he turned himself away for good measure. His shirt was practically torn from his own shoulders and chucked at Naruto as if it were acid to his body. Shikamaru pointedly ignored the sharp yelp as it hit her face and instead focused on the cool air on his skin.

"What the hell, Shikam—!"

"Wear that," he interrupted Naruto with a rough voice, carefully controlled. He could feel her pout radiating from her, but without the litany of growls and protests Shikamaru assumed she'd agreed.

"Bedroom,"—he ignored the thought of her naked, in his bedroom, on his bed, underneath him as he—"second drawer is pants," he plowed on, hearing her soft footfalls head in that direction, "Feel free, just… change and be… be dressed _please_."

Shikamaru was never not articulate and the fumbling made him wince even if Naruto didn't give meaning to his falters.

"Whatever you say, pushy," she complained through the blessedly shut door.

Shikamaru heard the rustling of clothes and the opening of his dresser before he felt it safe to remove his hand from his eyes. He breathed in deep and slow, dragging fingers harshly through his hair and undoing the ponytail by accident. He was calm, focused.

Or that's what he told himself.

His bedroom door squeaked open and Shikamaru noticed first that Naruto's pants were halfway under his bed forgotten before he dragged his gaze to the blonde. She had her nose nuzzled into his shirt and her eyes were closed.

"You smell really good, Shika," she quipped without so much as a stutter or blush and Shikamaru had to take another, oh so very deep, breathe in to soothe the ache. His shirt hung sinfully short on her body and…

Kami, Naruto was possibly the most troublesome thing in his life.

She stole his clothes to wear almost weekly ever since, her own tossed about his home until she came back to wash them. Eventually they just stayed and he washed them himself and he didn't mind the extra work of it at all.

The next step was harder for Shikamaru to define in words, but the easiest to identify in his head. It was… something akin to the mundane and epitomized by a simple, orange toothbrush.

Anyone who knew Naruto knew that the girl wasn't one for boundaries, so when he woke up one morning to see her sitting at the table happily, his toothbrush in her mouth and toothpaste dribbling down her chin, he wasn't in the least surprised. Rather, he had expected it and gifted the troublesome girl the toothbrush sitting at the back of his drawer for the past few weeks and it stayed in his bathroom since, right next to his.

Apparently this was a great deal more important than what Shikamaru's mind rationalized—"Stop stealing my stuff all the time, Naru," he hissed when finding her under his blankets on his couch in his favorite pajama pants _again_ and sipping from his tea mug _again_ —simply thinking that Naruto had started to monopolize his things a little too much and that everything would be that much less troublesome if she had her own. Not that he or Naruto cared about whatever meaning was supposedly prescribed to the gesture.

So for them, it wasn't the toothbrush's permanence in his apartment itself that induced the development, but rather the easiness between them that it brought.

Just the other day, when his genin team had been assigned a mission with an early departure—and by early, Shikamaru could only say that it was sinful to be up hours before even the sun had the balls to rise—Naruto was kissing him awake with glowing blue eyes staring down at him.

Groaning—"They can do it themselves, Naru, they don't need me," he mumbled thickly—Shikamaru closed his eyes again and ignored the insufferably awake girl hovering above him. Even the soft press of her knees on either side of his waist wasn't good enough to rouse him and her thumbs feathering at his ears was more relaxing than anything.

Shikamaru scowled less at the smell of her morning breath—something he had gotten over a long, long time ago—and more at the words that spilled from her mouth. Even at the unholiest hours of pre-morning, Naruto was unerringly loud and cheery, "Wake up, lazybones, you got a mission!"

But a person didn't spend as much time with Naruto as he did without gaining a certain amount of immunity to the booming voice. Shikamaru turned his head and brushed his forehead against the inside of her wrist, curling further into the heat of his bed. He knew she was pouting. He could feel the slight shift of the mattress as she rearranged her plan in her head, the slow but rambunctious thoughts moving. It was just that he didn't care in the lieu of sleep.

Silence was never a good look with Naruto—the girl wasn't even silent in her sleep—and it never meant anything good. For Shikamaru this morning, it meant her swinging her arms wide and positively plopping her dead weight onto him with laugh and bony knees digging into his hips painfully. She wriggled, finding an excuse to get her limbs poking and prodding in the most irritating places, before Shikamaru's arm wrapped around her waist and he flipped them over.

His body was heavy and pressing and effectively pinned down her kicking legs. His light snores pulsed by her ear in a soft pattern unaffected by her attempts to push him off. She switched tactics again.

Shikamaru moaned in content when her warm mouth kissed behind his ear, taking the shell of it between her lips. Naruto's teeth scraped against his earring and pulled lightly, once and then twice, in a way that had Shikamaru hugging her close with a throaty groan as her mouth moved on.

Under his jaw by the stubble and down his neck to Shikamaru's pulse point, the woman nipped lightly and soothed with her tongue, smiling against his skin when he rumbled appreciatively in his chest. When she finally reached the junction of his neck and shoulder, Naruto pulled back to look at Shikamaru's face and he was sure there was something murkier than sleep in his gaze when his eyes finally met hers.

He licked his lips thickly when she smiled at him once more, blindingly, in a way that had him shifting against her. She craned her neck back up to nuzzle at his ear, hot breath whispering against him and having him shudder and hold her tighter.

Then she bit him. Hard.

Naruto went flying to the floor, choking on unbridled laughter that had her breath as gasping pants, and Shikamaru bolted out of bed. One hand cupped his ravaged, _stinging_ ear while he looked at the girl with annoyance and betrayal. His lips were turned down sharply and dark eyes narrowed.

"Kami, Naruto, I'm _bleeding_ ," he growled, feeling the wetness on his palm. Naruto was still snorting with laughter. "I don't heal like you. How am I supposed to explain a fucking hole in my ear?"

Naruto's head flew back further and her hand slapped at the ground. Past the tearing guffaws, she wheezed, "New… New piercing?" She devolved even further into her laughter.

Gritting his teeth and almost snarling, Shikamaru left the infuriating ball of gold and tan and stumbled into the bathroom with a slam of the door. That's where Naruto's hands found him minutes later as he shaved.

Humming jauntily, she finger combed his hair straight, kissing the back of his neck lightly as she tied the strands into a tight ponytail. When her hands had done their job, they wrapped around his waist snuggly.

Shikamaru was still half asleep, and it took too much energy to stay annoyed. Especially when he was feeling Naruto's chin hike its way atop his shoulder, body vibrating against his with her hums. His en-suite was smaller than the bathroom in the living room—barely enough for the shower, sink, and toilet—but his mind must have previously deemed it an unnecessary observation because it wasn't until Naruto's arm reached past him to grab her toothbrush that Shikamaru realized it was only meant to hold one person.

He couldn't think of a time when they occupied this space at the same time. Naruto's ANBU assignments usually pulled her from the apartment before he woke up, and even without a mission the blonde was magnetized to the sun, naturally rising with the light. But the sun was still down and she was inexplicably up.

"Why are you up, anyway?" he drawled, shoulders drooping with a yawn. He snatched his own toothbrush from the cup and blinked slowly when he couldn't find the toothpaste. Naruto tapped the tube on the back of his hand and gave it to him.

Moving next to him—squeezing would be a more apt term—Naruto's eyes met his in the mirror. They were bleary and hers were just so _bright_. The blue of them glittered, exuding the type of emotion that Shikamaru couldn't fathom to fight against and so he never did. He welcomed the way her shoulder pushed warmly against his arm in the confining space.

"Wanted to say goodbye before ya left," Naruto stated, clear and concise and _simple_ because that's all Naruto knew how to be, and she began to brush her teeth.

He met the words with a blush and raised it a smile. The roll of his eyes was an added bonus, he figured, plopping his own toothbrush into his mouth.

It was serene and calming and beautifully mundane for a whole twenty seconds until her elbow is jamming into his side again and again and again and why did Naruto have to be so _dedicated_ to everything she did to the point that she was on the verge of breaking his rib because she was _brushing her teeth_.

Her eyes widened in horror and she strangles out a frothy sorry. Only, she's just as vivacious with her apology and her hands flung every which way, spraying the walls with toothpaste and smacking him in the face and the toothbrush straight out of his hand.

"Shika I am sosososososo _sorry_!" she screeched, hand darting towards him and then away, unsure of what to do.

Naruto was laughing the way she always did when she knew she's messed up marvelously. She didn't notice the hand scratching the back of her head was basically scrubbing her toothbrush into her hair, but Shikamaru felt no need to tell her. Call it payback for the looks his genin would give his swollen ear; something told him that "I fell" wasn't going to cut it. Shikamaru sighed, a long resigned thing.

Naruto noticed the closed eyes and deep breaths—mornings were always her thing and definitely _never_ his—and yelped out a third and fourth apology. The woman scrambled for a moment, shifting anxiously and bumping Shikamaru with knees and shoulders and hips in the small area.

It was unlike her, this moment of indecision, and Shikamaru marveled at the sight for a moment. Still, he was glad to see it gone.

As quick and as sudden as lightning, she lunged to pick up his toothbrush. She pressed awkwardly against him, face in his armpit and shoulder digging and wiggling deeper into his stomach before he plucked hers from her hand to continue brushing.

Naruto fell back to sit on the toilet, watching with a weird look on her face as Shikamaru finished with his oral hygiene. Looking over the orange toothbrush with a fast once over, Shikamaru dropped it on the floor next to his. Covering his—now minty fresh—mouth as it gaped wide with a yawn, the Nara stooped to kiss the crown of her head.

"See you," he rumbled, leaving the bathroom and then the apartment with dragging feet.

He's not exactly awake when he meets his brats at the gate, and he's sure the bit about being stung on the ear by a bee wasn't believed, but he's smiling and humming a slow tune.

Shikamaru hated that within the half month he's gone the tune was almost completely lost to his brain. And maybe it's that annoyance that instigates the moment, or maybe it's the way she made his home messy but lived in or how her eyes gleamed when he was around. How she smiled with too much teeth or how she laughed that jarring, abrasive laugh. He knows they're all reasons the second he arrived home to Naruto stuffing her face with ramen at his table. He kicked the orange jacket on the floor into the corner before approaching the woman.

"Apparently there hot water is out _again_ at my place and really- _Hey!_ " she yelled, hands scrambling for the ramen cup Shikamaru had just snatched from underneath her nose. When his hands came for her chopsticks and what few noodles hung there limply, gloriously depending on who was asked, Naruto shoved them into her mouth.

"Ramen isn't breakfast," Shikamaru chided with a roll of his eyes. Withstanding Naruto's glare, he dumped the cup's contents into the sink before rummaging through the fridge and heating up some real food. He crossed his arms and sighed, but made no other comment as Naruto spoke through a mouthful of food.

"Ramen is everything, Shika! It's.. It's…! Ramen is the flavor of the gods, damnit!" she rambled on, slurping a little more and chewing as slow as she possibly could to best savor the last remnants of her meal. But Naruto never was a patient woman. Soon she was picking at the rice Shikamaru had set in front of her and biting down on the grilled fish. Naruto eventually graduated to prodding at the pickled seaweed when Shikamaru raised a brow at her. "Bottom line: I _really_ don't want to go back. It's so quiet and bland and boring and there's nothing to do; plus it's so far from Ichiraku and everyone else and it even—"

"Then don't go back," Shikamaru interrupted. Naruto's eyes locked with his own, wide with slow blinks. He hadn't meant to say what he had, he hadn't even thought the words in his head, but as he mulled it about he found that he meant it.

Naruto was waiting on him, mouth hanging open. There was some stray rice caught in her hair, he noticed with a fond smile. Pushing off from the sink, he reached out and ran his fingers through the tresses, dislodging the piece of food from its perch. Gently, he rubbed the strands between his thumb and forefinger, marveling at the softness. They used the same shampoo every night, yet her hair was soft and pliable and sunshine incarnate while his was coarse and darkness. Taking in a deep breath—she also always smelled so much better than him and it didn't make any logical sense—Shikamaru raised his gaze to meet hers.

Shikamaru didn't think she had blinked or taken a breath. He had finally made her speechless.

He almost smirked.

"Stay here," he drawled with a slow, haphazard shrug, "Move in with me."

The gigawatt smile that erupted from Naruto was more than enough to convince him that he wasn't wrong in his decision. Naruto flinging herself across his lap and knocking him down to the ground was enough to convince him that there never really was any other decision anyway.

He felt as her happiness rumbled through her, vibrate up her vocal cords as she let out a breathless, "Yes yes a _thousand times_ yes," into his chest that she was almost slobbering all over him. His arms wrapped themselves happily around her waist and dragged her up his torso until her face snuggled into his neck so energetically that it rubbed the tender skin raw.

"Didn't know you could count that high," he quipped and was rewarded with a loud, jolting laugh that should have stung at his ear but the full _happiness_ in it was a salve. Instead, he shivered at her fanning breath and warm lips feathering apart for words.

"I'll have to get my stuff," she murmured with an airiness he'd never heard in her voice. It sent bliss down his spine and to his nerves and she only made it worse when her smooth hands grabbed his face and pulled him to her for a kiss. And a second and a third, and when the fourth kept going without any sign of stopping Shikamaru could only laugh into it and then Naruto was laughing too.

She was pure joy. Naruto was always pure joy, but now she was exploding it in his arms and gladly accepted it all.

The next day, upon returning from team training, Shikamaru found the entire living room and kitchen painted varying, hideous, shades of orange. Naruto was laying triumphantly on the couched, leg thrown over the back and head spilled off the end. Her eyes honed in on him in a second and in the next she was swinging onto his back and forcing him to catch her legs as they wrapped around his hips.

She rested her head on his shoulder and with that loud, filling voice of hers in his ear, she chirped, "Welcome home! Do you like it?"

Shikamaru was speechless. Astonished. Petrified by the… renovations.

But then she nestled her cold nose into the softness under his jaw and tightened her arms around his neck and hummed that happy jolting tune. He squeezed at the skin of her thighs beneath his hands and was rewarded with a soft nip to his neck and then a kiss to his cheek and the most brilliantly bright smile was pressed into his temple and she was vibrating with happiness. Literally wriggling and her ankles crissed and crossed over and over again and her toes wiggled a little dance. Shikamaru was surprised she wasn't jumping off the walls.

Well, he supposed she wouldn't want to ruin them when they were still wet, actually.

He smiled.

"I guess."

 **Tell me what you think! Working on the next chapters for Current but needed to upload something..**

 **Koby Out!**


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